Tag Archives: Meditation

When I prepare to lead retreats and before we gather in groups or meet one on one, I meditate on how to best create a loving and engaged learning community. I begin by reviewing past experiences to evaluate how to best set the conditions for meaningful and transformative work. Recently I read students’ reflections about working with me. They touched my heart. They read like love letters with renewed hope, awareness and commitment to self love and care. I feel grateful to be able to contribute in this way to my students’ lives and I’m inspired by my students’ courage to open their hearts to themselves, each other, and the experience, and to bring their learning home to affect a sustainable difference in their lives.

I am glad to be able to create the optimal conditions with others to allow for learning, reflection, contemplation and transformation. And yet, no matter how profound the “ah ha” moments are or how clear are the insights, those “ah ha” seeds will take root and grow into our daily lives only if we set the conditions and environment right. The conditions along with the heartfelt intention to thrive will determine if the seed will flourish or die.

The biggest benefit of a concentrated experience like a retreat, aside from having fun, is having the time and guidance to learn from experiential methods. With the right guidance it can help us open to our authentic nature and our heart’s desire. Paired with the commitment to pursue our desires, it motivates us to discern and decide how to set the optimal conditions to successfully unfold the desires into our lives.

Where do we begin?

Knowing our heart’s desire is only the beginning. It points the way to loving self-care, giving proper attention, and cultivating nourishing behaviors and practices for the seeds to grow. Unless we listen to the call of the heart and commit to taking the steps and actions to fulfill it, it will be hard to affect change.

Take small steps of self love and care on the mendful path

Remember why you are doing what you are doing and structure time for practices that support you living the lifestyle that supports living from your heart. Resolve to keep your commitments when resistance, negative thoughts, discomfort and forgetting arises. Be patient. It will take time to adjust and cultivate new habits. Make small, measurable and reachable expectations, endure and focus until you meet them and continue building on your success.

Use tools of remembering; write a Post-it note, write in your daily calendar, and write in a small scroll that you can wear in a Zigizen necklace with a daily affirmation close to your heart. Set a reminder alarm on your phone every hour or so to breath relaxing breaths for a minute and repeat the affirmation or simply breathe and settle into a moment of stillness.

Develop new supportive habits; I find that daily “refilling activities” are centering and helpful. I like taking walks, riding a bike, sitting in a sauna or a hot tub, listening to or reading inspiring thoughts, writing a gratitude list, and meditating into stillness for 10 minutes throughout the day. Also, resolving to participate in group activities to support you like yoga classes and inviting others to walk or meditate with you can be helpful and supportive.

May you remember your heart’s desire each day and allow the seeds of your intention grow and guide your life, and may the time and effort in supportive conditions blossom into what you desire in your life. May ease and contentment find you.

The view from the mountain

On this Shabbat evening and the evening of Shavuot holiday, beginning tomorrow night, we continue to strive for peace and the next level of reconciliation among all people. We resolve to not give up on working toward making the world better for all inhabitants. On Shavuot we celebrate the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai. We glimpse from the high point and ask not to shrink our hope into the painful details and despair. We respond with kindness and contemplate wisdom.

Sad about the violence in Tel Aviv I am reminded how fragile is the calm and our sense of freedom. I’m also encouraged by how caring, courageous and resilient the response has been. I reach to one of the luminaries of Jewish thought, Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz z’l for inspiration.

He taught there is no religious meaning in history. There is only an endless struggle for justice with a desire to help alleviate human suffering and fight against natural disasters and human made disasters. This endless effort gives our lives meaning. The human courage and ingenuity to invent and reinvent ourselves, endlessly, is the story of history. We are all in this eternal process together.

Thankfully, the impulse to help is greater than the urge to destroy. We mostly focus on the good.

May we resolve to be the champions of peace in the eternal struggle for the good. May we choose inclusive over exclusive as we remember our deep interconnectedness. May we hold up caring for all humans over religious righteousness which separates and causes us more suffering than we inevitably and naturally have to endure.